


20 Dog Tags

by NotSummer



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Alchera, Canon-Typical Violence, Not Everyone Gets a Happy Ending, Sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-15
Updated: 2017-02-15
Packaged: 2018-09-24 16:19:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9770075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NotSummer/pseuds/NotSummer
Summary: Originally posted on tumblr.There's 20 dog tags on Alchera. 20 stories never told.





	

  1. The kid who even Shepard with all her N7 training couldn’t beat at cards. He was fresh from the colonies, eager to help the Alliance, even if he’d never seen Earth. It was his dream one day: to visit the homeworld of humanity. He'd just gotten the notice that he was going to be transferred to a cruiser posted in orbit around Earth.
  2. There’s a girl who doesn’t talk about how she flinches from upturned hands and goes soft and quiet and still at the first sign of conflict. “The Alliance got me out,” is all she says. She dies because she’s too busy making sure others get out of the Normandy.
  3. There’s a woman who’s wife just received the papers for adoption. She’s a career marine, just two years shy of her twenty years. She was never going to become an officer: just a grunt who was proud to serve and who had the end in sight.
  4. There’s a kid with bright eyes who signed up to see the galaxy. They’re one of the first agender marines in the Alliance’s officer training program. They were assigned to the Normandy to shadow an older officer who would evaluate them. They received posthumous honors for being the one to hold open the emergency doors and let others into the halls leading to the escape pods. They saved 7 lives.
  5. There’s a street kid. A navy captain stopped her from picking his pocket when she was six. She’s one of the best engineers in the fleet, with her quick hands and quicker eyes. Her captains’s in the Second Fleet when the Reaper’s come to Earth. As his ship’s drive core overloads, and explodes, he whispers his daughter’s name. He’s sorry he never finished filing the adoption paperwork.
  6. There’s a boy who found a talent for strategy when he was in the street gangs of New York. He was managing combat simulations and updating the Normandy’s combat protocols against geth. The data never makes it off the ship until Shepard pulls it off a frozen hard drive two years later. His mother lives in the poorer areas. “I knew he would make something of himself,” she nods proudly, when the Alliance tells her his protocols saved three hundred lives during the Battle of the Citadel: no one had known who was responsible before Shepard recovered the OSD.
  7. There’s another young man who left his family’s farms on Mindoir, one of the survivors. “I want to protect,” he says. He does. A gas leak in the mess hall from the explosions would have killed 3 people if he hadn’t thrown himself at it. It killed just one, instead.
  8. A track star from a Vancouver high school: rich girl who was expected to get an MBA and carry on her family’s business. She shaved long blonde hair, gave up the expensive cosmetics and traded in top shelf clothes for BDU’s. She’s running to the pods, clearing debris when shrapnel slams into her. She couldn’t outrun the explosion.
  9. There’s a bitter older woman. “Lost my husband in a pirate attack,” she huffs. She’s been a spacer her whole life: someday, the Alliance might station her on Earth. She’s the one who tracks down Shepard for her reports and paperwork. Eventually, Shepard returns the favor and tracks down her tags, strangely at home on the soft soil.
  10. “Turians? Asari? Quarians?” It’s not an uncommon attitude. The engineer is set in her ways, determined to stand alone. After Tali shields her from a maintenance issue that could have gone horribly wrong, she changes her mind. Eventually, Tali is calling her Aunt. The engineers are a family, after all stuck next to the drive core and babbling over schematics no one else cares about. She pushes Tali outside engineering, making sure the quarian survives. Once she’s the last, she seals the bulkheads and powers down the core, ensuring it doesn’t blow and take out everything in a mile radius around the ship. She dies from the radiation leak.
  11. A marine career man. He’s not getting promoted: that’s fine, a leadership position isn’t something he’s suited to. Nah, he’s happiest on the front lines, where he knows he’s protecting his son. Hasn’t seen his son in 17 years: he joined the Alliance after he got out of prison to prove he could be a better man.
  12. Another career marine. He’s a father, too. He likes to share pictures of his little girl with his new best friend. He’s always been a model citizen, not even a speeding ticket. Their tags are found right next to each other. The heat of the explosion melted the chains together.
  13. There’s a sniper. Another young woman with a troubled past, but she’s proud of her scars. “I survived, didn’t I?” She’s a powerful and charming woman, who’s cast off the shackles of domestic abuse, but she doesn’t survive this.
  14. A biotic, on her first tour. She’s a Vanguard, and she’s eager, brash, and jingoistic. She likes to joke that she’s so devoted to the Alliance that she turned blue and became a biotic. She loves the quiet dawn hours where she’ll maintain the shotguns: no one onboard the Normandy, not even the Gunnery Chief from Eden Prime, knows shotguns quite like her.
  15. Another sniper. He’s relentlessly cheerful, with a quip for every occasion. He’s been known to get even Shepard to burst out in full belly laughs. There’s no one on board who doesn’t like such a bright soul.
  16. A young girl, who signed up the minute she turned 18. Someone noticed her, and she got assigned to the Normandy. She meets a young asari on shore leave: they’ve been shyly exchanging letters ever since. She’s never been in a relationship before: there was always too much to do, and never enough time.
  17. There’s a boy who meets a turian. He doesn’t say anything until Vakarian catches him trying to learn the turian language. He stutters out the story to Garrus, who’s surprised. A turian and a human? What are the odds? He coaches the boy on his pronunciation, and Commander Shepard pretends she never stumbled into the room: easy enough, the two never noticed her. 
  18. A young man who’s been laughing with some salarian friend over an extranet game. It’s the first time either of them have really talked with anyone outside their own species. The two are in the middle of a dungeon crawl when the Collector Ship is spotted. A quick message, “we’re under attack, I have to go, its been fun”. Silence. The salarian joins the STG. He won’t be happy to let others sacrifice while pretending the galaxy is fine. Not anymore.
  19. A communications specialist with bright red hair, who volunteered to take the station up front. She’s one of the first to die, killed by her enthusiasm. She raises the alarm from her station a second before Moreau does. The young ensign had no family back home, and no lover who would mourn her passing. Instead, her dog tags are shuffled onto the chain next to Joker’s. The two had spent quite a bit of time bantering over old Earth records.
  20. Pressley, who could easily have chosen to turn his back on the aliens aboard, but challenged himself and made friends instead. Who got so sheepishly excited when Shepard illegally commandeered the Normandy, more eager to help than follow orders. The navigator who never got to find his way home.



**Author's Note:**

> Kudos are appreciated, as are comments. Feel free to come yell at me about Alchera on tumblr at [aint-summer-here](aint-summer-here.tumblr.com)!


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